freebee

I think this perception is false.

On many big rail corridors like Antwerp/Rotterdam through Germany/Switzerland to Milan/Torino/Genova a lot or the rails are very shared by freight and passengers.

There are dedicated passengers rails mostly on (expensive to ride) high speed lines and there are dedicated freight tracks within ports and such, but a lot of tracks are still shared by both.

Plenty of saturated lines where you can see everything pass by: intercities, S-bahn style, freight all on same tracks and only at certains stops can they overtake each other.

I think the Swiss beat you aswell. They run a rather dense network too. Not dense like NL in the urban sense of the word, but Swiss connections are very well frequented and they run through some quite difficult terrain adding to the difficulty of running it all smoothly. The Swiss and Dutch network has quite some resemblance actually in how it is ran, both more perceived as a transfer model with rather easy to read, logical timetables ("runs every half hour": 13u00 13u30 14u00 etc), both barely having any real high speed lines.

From having travelled with trains in Europe, i'ld intuitively say in Europe Swiss wins, followed by the Netherlands and then perhaps the Austrians or the French. Belgium up there is this ranking is just lies and deceipt, in my experience the Germans the Belgians are about as reliable (not), but the germans do still win from Belgium because they are (often but not always) more fair in the communication and they hand out "request a refund"-forms in delayed trains.

running it slower on schedule does solve the problem of being more predictable and being able to plan a bit better if you have to catch connections. I much rather have more realistic timetables over trying to achieve overall shorter travel times.

The 'fast' version of Mechelen-Leuven (the 25min) is a lot slower now because they rerouted it to add the new Brussels airport stop on this line. Of course a train with fewer stops will run faster. But this airport stop seems worth it to me for both cities, though longer route it now runs almost the same time as the slow stops everywhere L-train (31min) between the two cities.

Anyhow, not really punctuality to blame in this example, it's a planning/routing choice. One you might disagree with, sure, but it's not punctuality.

Sometimes trains become "faster" in the same way because stops get skipped more often or cancelled altogether. They could run a very fast train between Eupen and Oostende, but what's the point if you're not picking up and dropping off any passengers along the route? Filling up the path for a "fast" connection almost noone can actually use. Trains in Belgium are slow in general because there are just villages and stops everywhere, every single train not on an actual highspeed line has the same hard choice: how many stops, where yes, where no, how many passengers a day does a stop need to be worth it? I've cursed often at the Beveren stop on the Antwerp-Gent line, but there are always people getting on and off there... Our city planning has just been shit for 200 years and this is a consequence, much of our rail network functions more like a large metrosystem.

even the little bits of grass around the peaks in foreground could actually be used. I'm amazed how risky cows behaviour is regarding to the abyss, and goats somehow are just completely not afraid of heights at all and hop around on 400 meter cliffs like a walk in the park. So you can grow food (meat+milk) on mountain sides during summer

thanks for the links!

the amount of equivalent USD is mostly meaningless in regular life. What matters is what you can buy in that place for how much they make. And also what you have to buy and what goes besides your paycheck (socialised healthcare in scandinavia vs higher wages in usa for example).

For example within Europe: yes, wages are way lower in eastern EU countries than in some western EU countries, but so is the price of coffee, the rent etc. That only becomes tangible when you travel.

Yeah, the spirit of your comment i agree with, but not the letter.

Nothing should be completely free, because nothing is free. Water needs processing, electricity needs a grid, sewage needs treatment, etc.

Basic things should be affordable for all: housing, water, electricity, internet, food etc.

But "free" creates incentives to be careless with resources. Which is counterproductive to making sure they are available for all at affordable prices.

Dutch has the same word: angst. In my experience it's not as "heavy" as Angst in German, but rather interchangeable with "schrik hebben" or "bang zijn". Though "angstig zijn" might be more of longer duration, like a character trait of a person.

Exactly what I'm looking for! I'ld like back sleeping but with a slightly tilted, side supported head. Lean head all the way = neck pain. Head straight = can't fall asleep. I've tried stuff with backsleeping+ side support for leaning the head, but the extra pillow on the head side isn't strong enough (doesn't last) and it all gets too hot around the head.

Some say they caught the bullet on camera. What a time to be alive!

In Germany they sometimes put solar on the south side of historic trash hills. Seems like a good idea I can't think of downsides.

Who? Who would be capable of gathering the trump support and getting enough votes? Part of the right wing powerful 1 guy thingy is this: 1 guy. Take the guy away, and you have no idea what would happen and if someone else would manage to keep the gathered power going and maybe gather even more. Would be very different if trump were president when it happened, then the power is formalised and the takeover by another supervillain easier, but during campaign that would be quite the feat and I'm really wondering who would have been capable of it.